Consolation is neither the primary nor the only motive for religious behavior. Nevertheless, it is a motive:
"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
"Nobody knows but Jesus..." (See here)
The more basic motives are:
awe - the appropriate response to transcendence;
the attempt to control incomprehensible natural forces, initially by personifying them.
When Draka and serfs were homo sapiens, the former allowed the latter to practice (tightly controlled) Christianity - but the Master Race themselves remained arrogantly and scandalously ignorant. When a Draka woman saw one of her personal serfs kneeling before a priest, she remembered that this was a ritual called confession, confusion, communion or something like that. Meanwhile, the serf was an Alliance spy and the priest was her contact.
When drakensis and servus have become separate species, the servus:
are content, with no need for any consolation;
feel awe and slight fear in the presence of drakensis;
understand and control natural forces through technology.
Therefore, they no longer have any perceived need for religion.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And that was another terrible and evil thing done by the Draka to the Homines servi, not only making them WILLING slaves but also INDIFFERENT to ultimate questions of the kind covered by theology and philosophy. To be merely "...content, with no need for any consolation..." is to be dangerously close to being like sheep.
I can think of one scenario which might break this degrading form of being content, if, before their very eyes the New Race Draka finally suffer serious and indisputable defeats, that might get some of the servi to finally doubt the rightness of the Domination's rule. And perhaps even to wonder if a God exists.
Another point of this: mention was made of how, even centuries after the Final War, some unmodified humans continued to survive in remote, obscure corners of Earth. I think mention was made in THE STONE DOGS that secret refuges were made where unenslaved humans could preserve a remnant of the non Draka past and serve as nuclei for a future counter blow against the Domination.
Perdition to the Domination! Sean
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